Console gamers now don’t need to wait for years to get the best tech, says Aaron Greenberg.

Earlier this week Microsoft announced Project Scorpio, the next era of console gaming. An era where consoles won’t be tied to a particular set of hardware architecture for a number of years but instead Microsoft will be pushing a upgraded SKU every 3-4 years. The next Xbox will see a massive boost in GPU processing and a big jump in memory bandwidth along with a possible boost in CPU clock speed.

The upgraded console will in many ways also bring the Xbox closer to PC spec, enabling 4K gaming on consoles for the first time ever. And according to Microsoft’s head of marketing Aaron Greenberg, Xbox Scorpio will break the wall between PC and console gaming.

“This was really under the vision that Phil Spencer provided,” he revealed to Gamereactor. “His vision was really about putting the gamer at the center of everything we do. Allowing players to play without boundaries, these walls that existed between PC and console gamers. We really felt that didn’t need to be there. As gamers we don’t just play on one box or in one room and so how we can continue to let you take the games you buy from us and digitally have access to those across multiple devices without having to buy the games again.”

“Being able to provide hardware upgrades. Not just making it smaller but giving you new tech. And the benefits from the PC side with 4K gaming…how can we bring it to consoles without having to wait for man,y many years for that. So that was really the vision of Phil and the team under him. I think we are pretty proud of what we are achieving so far.”

If I were conducting that interview and Aaron said that, I would have said, “well, does it allow us to play Steam games like the pc does, or are we just stuck playing these crap games from the Xbox library”?

“Hello? Aaron, are you still there?”

“Hello? What were you saying about that wall between console and pc gaming, Aaron? Aaron? Hello”?

Bad wolf

So it’s about games now huh. :DDDDDD

angh

Wasn’t it always?

OC Guy

When was it not? By the way most of the other features that were introduced for the X1 are amazing! Have you tried any?

MaximMillion

Hahaha check out this angry fanboy. What a d!¢k XD

sgt_hammertime

yep, if he were the interviewer that’s what Aaron would’ve said to him and then walked away.

PCMR Truth™ #BlockMeIWin

Sonycucks still jealous of the freedom the PC Platform has because they have no games. Pathetic. Beg for the Grace of Gaben to save your garbage platform some more. It’s never happening 🙂

MS always had the AAA games and Multiplayer Titles, but, now they will CRUSH the PS4 in Graphics, too! Scorpio is a Beast!!!

Psionicinversion

2160p actually

OC Guy

Which isn’t bad, but lets face it most gamers want raw power…this current gen proved that in a big way!

MaximMillion

Neo won’t even do 4k gaming properly at the currently rumoured specs

Riggybro

Scorpio will have a tough time doing 4K too.
Phil Spencer himself has said that the Scorpio GPU will effectively be in the ball park of a GTX 980.
That’s cutting it pretty fine for running a AAA in 4K even at mid-settings 30fps.
To put in perspective by the time Scorpio comes out in 18 months a GPU like the GTX 980 will be a 3 year old GPU.

I think both companies are basically doing what they did this gen with promising “full HD” consoles.

OC Guy

Maybe, but full specs are not released yet. MS might just be waiting for Sony to respond with a bit of a power creep in regard to the Neo so they can up the anti even more with the Scorpio…That is just an assumption but I wouldn’t be surprised if the Scorpio is slightly more powerful when released compared to what some are suggesting the specs are right now.

Mr Xrat

Please tell me you aren’t stupid enough to think 4K is actually 4,000 in this context.

After being in delusion about your no games this gen, at least Phil has the decency to be honest about it for your upgrade.

PCMR Truth™ #BlockMeIWin

Ruggarell trying to get xcucks to admit they have no games while PS4 has no games.

Hilarious scenes.

d0x360

This is phil spencer telling the world don mattrick and co who took over during the 360 life cycle are a bunch of idiots and Microsoft can easily afford to outspec anyone. This is the box they should have launched with but mattrick was so damn scared of ps4 he showed his hand too soon and his hand was full of poo.

Now I have an xbox one and use it every day but thats because spencer and co have made it a great box. If its a game that I think will push boundaries ill get it on pc where I can max it out at 60fps+. Thats why my ps4 sits there and rarely gets used. Exclusives only there and even then I’m not a fan of most sony titles. I find them to be very casual and bland except for a very select few.

Psionicinversion

nah its cus they wanted to do all that TV crud and they had a price in mind they wanted to launch the console at and that affected the hardware. if they separated the kinect from the the consoel like they should of done they would of had a bigger budget for the console

d0x360

Yes…so why are you saying nah when you are agreeing with me?

Don Mattrick made a bunch of dumb decisions and started focusing on media and kinect on the 360. He continued making bad decisions for the xbox one. He could have included the kinect and higher specs but he didnt. He could have also dropped kinect which by that point based on the 360 nobody wanted another one. Voice commands could have been handled by putting the mic in the console itself.

Aaron Greenberg isn’t much of a “Specs guy” , you can kinda tell by his interviews…

Im not sure how Phil Spencer managed to convince Satya Nadella to allow him to spend this type of money on Xbox, but it sure is welcomed I guess.

Im more into the software aspects of these consoles than the hardware, but to tell the consumer to chose their specs for the console is something that i’ve never seen before.

i wonder how long investors are going to let Phil keep this party going.

Jonathan George Anaya

With $26 BILLION in profit last quarter, I’m sure the Party can Last Forever 🙂

ShowanW

i know the money is there to keep the party going…
but R&D on new builds (which is multiple variants before deciding on one) is far from cheap.

To spec out chip sets, work with AMD, multiple UWP revisions for different hardware specs can get pricey really quick…

Psionicinversion

doesnt need multiple UWP revisions seeing as DX12 and UWP needs to advance with PC gaming and PC gaming is always ahead of the consoles so there literally is no extra work as it will already be done

ShowanW

true.. but overhead has to be taken into consideration at all times.

is eSRAM still being accounted for in the code?
is this AMD Polaris architecture or not?

i know that UWP allows them to port the infrastructure to any subset of hardware without much work, but the cost still goes into the budget.

nothing is free or written off

sgt_hammertime

only the people in the know knows the specs. at this point I don’t know and you don’t know not even the final fantasy guys know. so our speculations means nothing.
and what overhead are you talking about?

ShowanW

When hardware changes, code has to be modified no matter how little or big.

Now your right, we have no clue on the final spec change, but Microsoft touting 320 on the memory bamdwith of the gpu lets me know that theres a change and optimization has to be done accordingly.

So thats still R&D for performance which is still equal to overhead for budget

Psionicinversion

or its bringing it inline with PC performance…290x/390/x had 320GBs bandwidth since 2013… thing is the same as the Neo you basically optimise for the xbox or playstation youve pretty much already optimised for the neo and scorpio. its little differences. With the Neo it will be more about 1080p max settings 60 fps and upscaled 4k which could actually be alot better… with scorpio its more if you want 4K there will have to be sacrifices your not getting max setting 30fps that laughable, unless its an indie of course but no AAA is hitting that.

so yeah, im a pc gamer so i understand this stuff alot more than a console gamer, the amoutn of crap ive heard since e3 is ridiculous. just chill out, scorpio will be out 1 year after neo so it doesnt matter

ShowanW

This makes sense to me…

Yes there will be little code change, but engineers dont do this for free..

All goes under the R&D budget for new hardware specs nonetheless

Psionicinversion

R+D into hardware yes but into MS software/…its done already. I saw one idiot saying no developer will ever support 4K on xbox then i have to remind him every pc game supports 4K resolution, theres no difference.

I think hardware R+D will be more to do how small can they make it, what type of cooling system, etc rather the the actual; hardware. Sony has its hardware down to a T. that addition of being able to flush the compute commands separate from the main graphics queue is ingenious and is a direct result of how ps4 can achieve those visuals it has. Now the structure of those commands has been out for ages, will MS “copy” that or not. games still have to run on x1 after all… well no he said games form youer old system will run on scorpio so yeah it wil BUT….can a scorpio game run on X1??? i dont think they will do that because 4K for corpio will be dicey but.

Scorpio will have the low power version of Zen, that isnt specualation that a fact. Like the equivalent of Jaguar but the zen altrnatove plus ity has the 40% IPC improvement and much higher clocks.

My PC when scorpio comes out will still be 2-3 faster BUT 6 years later when hopefully PC has evolved oim hoping it wuill; be ridicuo9usly faster

Psionicinversion

esram will most likely be in the Xbox S, but it will not be in the scorpio. it would be a massive bottleneck. youve got a clean cut 320GB sec. you dont want nothing messing with that at 4k

Polaris architecure at its core will enhance the experience probably why Gears of War devs say Xbox S is more powerful , evemn with the same shader count actually especially with the shader count and clock speed the architecture improveents as a whole will result in a slightly more powerful system that cannot be measured by TFLOP performance. youll have to measure by fps difference

well tbh AMD does most of the work and it will be fairly cheap for them to release updated hardware specs with x86 because its constantly evolving, you getting node drops, hardware advancing so its happening anyway so its not like powerpc or the cell, its alot cheaper to do it that way

ShowanW

amd does do a bulk of the work… but microsoft always customizes the chips to their specification after the fact. look at the architecture of the current xbox one chip and ps4 chip…

both use jaguar, but if you look at the spec breakdown of the xbox chip,you see microsoft design language all over it.

Corey

I like Phil’s vision. He’s doing good work.

d0x360

My wife and I have just started playing Mario maker and kart together. I’ve had them since launch but I talked her into giving it a go.

Its funny cause she rarely plays anything and I had an easier time getting her to try the first 2 missions in the new hitman than I did mario. She was afraid she couldn’t do mario because she had never really played a mario game before =O

Psionicinversion

To truley break the wall with PC gamers, the Xbox NEEDS to be able to run ANY peripheral you can use with PC. its not hard for them to do in fact it incredibly simple. None of this stuff that only works with xbox cus PC is all about choice. You want the PC crowd give them choice or they will show the middle finger. Only thing is these hardware companies will have to do there software in the UWP/UWA BS

3-4 years is pretty good although i think the 2nd gen xbox scorpio will be the true 4K gaming device, its a bit to soon really

sgt_hammertime

please explain to me how simple it is? do you understand the amount of bloat that would have to be built into the OS in order to support many different types of peripheral drivers?
anyway, I don’t game on PC that much and I welcome the console upgrades. i’m glad that Microsoft is going back to their 4 year release cycle because then consoles won’t be holding back gaming anymore.

Psionicinversion

no its actually nothing. its just drivers. at there basic functionality its a HID driver. Human Interface Device, you can plug it in and it will work well in windows but MS took that option out to sell you xbox specific devices, the extra comes from the hardware manufacturers software that allows you to remap those “keys or buttons” to any configuration even game specific configuration. You cant tell me that you would like a game specific profile for Halo, or battlefield or cod or some space game or any other game on the planet.

and how many different hid drivers to you think there are?
and what about the dlls dependencies?
there’s a reason console OSs/Game OSs are cut down and streamlined. having a bunch of unneeded dlls active will cut into the budget and devs needs every little bit of processing.
–
there are options and people are allowed to use whatever options they want. i’m a console gamer now and dont’ really see myself getting back into PC gaming that much, maybe here and there but it’s primarily console. if PC is freedom for you then by all means. not everyone likes to game on PC

Psionicinversion

MS has them all. you maqy try to downplay it but guss what iy had al the driver for the last 20 years. DLLs are nothing, it like going for a 2990-3000 battery i.e nothign. You dont get it at alol. MS or sony or nintendo could EASILY offer those advantage bu thery dont now whay??? peripheral sales. that th the only reason…

sgt_hammertime

yeah sure i’m downplaying it. maybe we should think about it a bit more. yep you have all the drivers in an OS that takes up 10 to 15gb not to mention the amount of RAM that is being used. currently i’m at 5gb with only the browser open.
if the dlls/drivers takes up 50 to 100mb that’s memory devs could be using for their games instead of supporting old peripherals that only a small set of people use.
I agree that accessory sales do matter to the consoles makers, but it matters in the way that profits made from the accessories act as a part of the subsidy in making the console itself cheaper. this in the sense that if the console is being sold at a $20 loss but it’s expected that each person will buy an extra controller during the console’s lifespan and each controller is sold at a $15 dollar profit so essentially the console is being sold at $5 loss.
but anyway, I’m all for giving devs more, not less

Psionicinversion

your at 5GB because the OS uses double the ram as a cache. For instance win 10 will use 4GB of my RAM but it only actually requires just over 2GB. it takes another 2GB as a cache to more quickly open programs and stuff and it can take that back whenever it wants.

drivers takes up 10-15Gb oh noes how ever will my 100GB hard drive cope… we have TB’s of storage. Its nothing

each controller being sold at a $15 dollar profit… lmao its more than that. You know at the start of the gen the DS4 only cost $15 to make… how much does it sell for??!!!!

sgt_hammertime

do you mind telling me how consoles handle os cache?
I made install size comment to point out that there are lots of drivers and files in windows partly because it has to deal with millions of older files, software and hardware. the comment wasn’t about it taking up all your hdd space.
about the controller it was an example plus I believe that I am right on or very close to the mark. even though it’s being sold for $60 you have to take into consideration vendor and distribution cost etc. there are lots of middle men to deal with and each of them wants a cut so out of that 60 maybe 30 goes back to the manufacturer and if it costs 15 to build then how much is left for profit?
just like games that are sold for $60, the developer/publishers only see $30 of that.
–
my point is simply that the cost of accessories and game sales help to keep the cost of consoles down, therefore if you’re trying to paint it as nefarious for having device specific accessories then I will say that you’re wrong, it’s actually a good thing for the console.
and I don’t think they NEED to enable access to the system for any and ALL peripheral because that’s just stupid in the sense that it opens the box to a lot of attack vectors.
I rather play in a game that’s not being hacked by everyone
i’m all for giving devs all the power and budget they can get, whether it’s 5 or 100mb
to me supporting all and any peripheral is definitely not an a need bases, the cost of the console is more important.
that’s how I see it.

Psionicinversion

well the consoles dont multitask at all really. When im on my ps4 and i want to play a game it will ask me to shut down the previous thing i was using so the amount of RAM it needs is barely anything and it has 2.5-3GB ram out of the 8GB specifically for the OS.

The amount it costs to build will have the manufacturers cut in there. After watching Dragons Den where the people pitching break down the costs to manufacturer distribute etc, the store selling the product gets a massive cut mostly ive heard about 50% of the RRP. the manufacturer doesnt earn much and solely relies on massive bulk orders. But with the consoles the store doesnt earn anything from that instead relying on the money from game sales and peripherals.

Same as the Apprentice, a team went to a wholesaler and was trying negotiate a better price and even Alan Sugar said youve got be mad negotiating with a wholesaler as they rely on selling in bulk to make there profits.

You do know most hacks have programs installed on the PC and hook into exe’s and dll’s… you still cant install any of that on a console so hacking will still be non existent really.

Its not going to cost the console anything to be able to plug in anything you want its just software… the console has USB slots already so doesnt need to add anything

sgt_hammertime

you’re talking about your PS4 but then you’re trying to use that in an Xbox thread??? you’re joking right? let me just tell you, the way your ps4 works is not how xbox works. you’re trying to use your console that doesn’t run windows as an example for how windows works. there’s a lot of things wrong with that.
–
I’ve never watched dragons den but i’m managed a couple retail stores and one of those dealt directly with the manufacturer on couple of our products after we decided to cut out the middle men and get the products much cheaper.
what I understand about the gaming ecosystem is that the stores do make money on consoles, games and accessories sold. I mean, there is literally NO reason to carry a product that doesn’t give you a return. it seems you’re trying to tell me that retailers basically gives the consoles shelf space and storage space for free to manufacturers in the hope of selling more games and accessories…
also you’re going back on what you’ve said before: clearly you said sony made a lot more than $15 on each controller sold and you based that on the amount it’s sold for. but now you’re trying to tell me that actually they don’t make that much but they depend on bulk sale to actually make money.
–
i’m not a pc gamer anymore, but I remember hacks being done through usb. allowing any and all peripherals opens the community to a lot of unneeded trouble and someone using a hacked or uncertified and modfied controller can easily get an unfair advantage and potentially destroy the community was apart of my point along with adding a wider area for modified devices to hook into.
instead of having 2 doors you create 50 to accommodate every and all bodies….but at some point you or someone will leave one of those doors unlocked and someone who you don’t want will get it.
–
it actually costs engineering man hours. i’m glad that Microsoft is taking their time in implementing keyboard and mouse support, I want them to get it right and secure, I honestly don’t want them to enable any and all bodies in, but a curated set of certified peripherals

Psionicinversion

Yah was hungover earlier so forgot how xbox OS works. Forgetting it has 3 OSs running on a VM Xbox windows is more like windows phone OS than desktop windows in how it operates. You’ll have an app or browser or whatever when you move to something else it will suspend it claiming back resources but leaves abit in memory so it can start up faster. How many of those you can have before it starts fully closing programs I dunno but seeing as MS made a big deal about being able to play music whilst playing a game sometime this year in an update tells me it really doesn’t multitask that much just on select.

I clearly said Sony makes more than $15 on each controller sold… Lol no I didn’t I told you that was what they were being manufactured for, that includes the profit from the manufacturer. They would of made over 50 million of them by now way over. Dunno how much Sony gets per controller but the store that sells them gets the majority of the money.

Ifixit did a cost breakdown of the ps4 when it first released and for the hardware and packaging and stuff think it came to $382 and it sold for $400. So you tell me how much money is the store getting per console?? Stores will stock the product as there relying on you going there and possibly buying other stuff while your there. Sort of like how supermarkets have these deals on, it’s too get you in there in the hopes you’ll buy more stuff from them.

The problem with these certified peripherals is there more expensive than just buying the same thing. They charge more just for a Xbox or playstation logo on it. Forgot about nodded controllers but you know. How would it take man hours to implement mouse and keyboard? It will be tiny because it’s already there via gamepad support no different really

Riggybro

Effectively he is saying in the future we will all be Win10 PC gamers. You can either buy a static spec cheaper one from MS or build one your self.

No more Xbox “console” then?

PCMR Truth™ #BlockMeIWin

PC wins. PS4 is dead

Nintendo and PC future. Deal with it

Riggybro

Your GPU is weaksauce :op

PCMR Truth™ #BlockMeIWin

Better than the Starvestation 4 and will be even better than the Pee-O when I get my RX 480X 😉

sgt_hammertime

whenever there’s a new console announcement there will always be a bunch of arm-chair developers telling you what the console can and cannot do. even though they haven’t developed anything in their whole life or touched a dev kit before but they can sure tell you how its going to run games. these guys, they’re the real developers I tell you

Phil has really changed the Xbox brand for the greater. This is his first console as head of Xbox and its a beast. He is really putting all of that money to good use to make the Xbox brand successful. Now what I would like Microsoft to do is make the One, One S and Scorpio be able to play full BC OG xbox and 360 games. I also would like them to invest in more 3rd party and 1st party games.

Mr Xrat

It’s the same as the Xbone with a spec upgrade, so really all he’s done is slapped a band-aid on a gaping wound.

Keep begging for old games. You might get that, unlike investment in first party. Phil’s really taken a knife to that.

PCMR Truth™ #BlockMeIWin

Reminds me of Uncle Shu’s new brand strategy of COD and Star Wars timed exclusive DLC, Ruggacuck since Sony’s decided they don’t want their 1st party either. Wonder how long till the axe comes out for Naughty Dog now Unsharted Bore flopped and you start stringing up the noose in your cuckshed 🙂

Im not begging for old games idiot, just stating my opinion on what I would like Microsoft to accomplish for Xbox gamers. You dont have a clue on how many 1st party games Microsoft has invested in for this year Mr.rat so go back in your hole.

Break the wall, with PC gamers getting free access to XBL and still playing all their multiplats on Steam which is walled off from the W10 Store?

The Human Cyst may have competition from Ybarra for chief scumbag, but he sure knows how to secure his lead.

PCMR Truth™ #BlockMeIWin

Meanwhile Uncle Andy is begging and pleading Sonycucks not to see the light and move to the superior PC platform and buy multiplats on the POS4 at silky smooth 24FPS. Then declaring that Sony are now competing versus PC while releasing yet another underpowered console with no games for the Sonycucks to buy killing the dream of sonycucks that Valve might pity them enough to put Steam on their trash console so they may actually get games. Because sonycucks sure can’t parade Shadow Of The Beast (900P LOL) anymore.

PC wins again. Nintendo won E3. Your constant cuck meltdowns have been incredible to witness all week, Joshua. And as PS4 still gets no games, they will still be incredible to watch. 🙂